mv - Move/rename objects

Synopsis

Description

The gsutil mv command allows you to move data between your local file
system and the cloud, move data within the cloud, and move data between
cloud storage providers. For example, to move all objects from a
bucket to a local directory you could use:

gsutilmvgs://my_bucket/*dir

Similarly, to move all objects from a local directory to a bucket you could
use:

gsutilmv./dirgs://my_bucket

Renaming Groups Of Objects

You can use the gsutil mv command to rename all objects with a given prefix
to have a new prefix. This is accomplished by copying each object to a new
object with the desired name and deleting the old one. For example, the
command:

gsutilmvgs://my_bucket/oldprefixgs://my_bucket/newprefix

would rename all objects under gs://my_bucket/oldprefix to be under
gs://my_bucket/newprefix, otherwise preserving the naming structure.

If you do a rename as specified above and you want to preserve ACLs, you
should use the -p option (see OPTIONS).

Note that when using mv to rename groups of objects with a common prefix
you cannot specify the source URL using wildcards. You need to spell out
the complete name:

gsutilmvgs://my_bucket/oldprefixgs://my_bucket/newprefix

If you have a large number of files to move you might want to use the
gsutil -m option, to perform a multi-threaded/multi-processing move:

gsutil-mmvgs://my_bucket/oldprefixgs://my_bucket/newprefix

Non-Atomic Operation

Unlike the case with many file systems, the gsutil mv command does not
perform a single atomic operation. Rather, it performs a copy from source
to destination followed by removing the source for each object.

A consequence of this is that, in addition to normal network and operation
charges, if you move a Nearline Storage or Coldline Storage object, deletion
and data retrieval charges apply. See the documentation for pricing details.

Options

All options that are available for the gsutil cp command are also available
for the gsutil mv command (except for the -R flag, which is implied by the
gsutil mv command). Please see the OPTIONS sections of gsutil help cp
for more information.